Payout for part-time lecturer sets precedent, union claims

The lecturers' union Natfhe today claimed victory for part-time lecturers after the settlement of a three-year battle with Leeds Metropolitan University.

Natfhe and the TUC hope that the precedent set by Susan Birch, a part-time lecturer in English as a foreign language, will boost pay and conditions for 30,000 hourly-paid lecturers in new universities and part-time workers in other sectors.

But the university denied any precedent had been set because the settlement was reached before the tribunal could reach a decision.

She has been awarded £25,000 compensation and is being transferred to a full-time permanent contract in a settlement agreed just before the case was due to go to a final hearing.

Ms Birch worked at Leeds Met for seven years as a lecturer, teaching more hours than colleagues who were employed on full-time contracts doing broadly similar work, yet earned as much as £10,000 a year less. She said she was denied career development opportunities and had to work excessively long hours to earn sufficient income.

A Leeds Met spokeswoman said: "While we would not normally comment on individual employment matters, we would wish to make the point that the tribunal did not reach a conclusion on the substance of the claim, and no decision was made that establishes a precedent or affects the position of part-time hourly-paid staff generally within the university or elsewhere in the sector."

Natfhe said Ms Birch was the first hourly-paid UK teaching professional to successfully use the Part Time Workers (Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000 to challenge an employer. An earlier judgment on the legal principles of her case clearly set out the need to change the structure of the employment relationships between universities and hourly-paid lecturers, said the union.

The Natfhe general secretary, Paul Mackney, said the case established that part-time lecturers were entitled to equal, pro-rata pay rates to full-time colleagues. "This will bring confidence and hope to thousands of badly paid lecturers in further and higher education. Over 40% of university teaching staff are on hourly-paid contracts. Many experience poverty pay, job insecurity and poor working conditions - often not even having a desk. The further education sector also depends heavily on a vast army of hourly-paid, part-time staff, many on exploitative contracts," he said.

"We want to see part-time staff employed on fractional contracts with equivalent rates of pay and conditions to full-time colleagues. This victory is one more step towards achieving that."

Ms Birch said her employers seemed sympathetic but said the university simply could not afford fractional contracts. "Most colleagues were sympathetic, though the phrase 'part-time' still conjures up 'pin-money' in the minds of some grey-suited men of a certain age.

"The money will pay off debts but I hope this result will help the thousands of part-time staff in education who suffer similar discrimination. Now I just want to get on with my life and my career," she said.